After a 4am start, and over 13 hours in transit, I finally made it back to Svalbard, and boy is it good to be back. The flight in over Spitsbergen itself was absolutely amazing; clear skies afforded fantastic views of snow covered peaks, glaciers and glacier tongues, sea ice and fjords as far as the eye could see, it was truly amazing. This fantastic greeting to the Arctic made me forget my extreme fatigue (I should mention that I forgot to pick up my boarding pass from the self-service machine and had to harass a helpful staff member in my panic – it was all fine...) so that I could head down to the annual beach party in celebration of midsummer with a few fellow sea-ice summer school people. In addition to enjoying the midnight sun and watching foolish people swim in the Arctic waters, I was lucky (if that’s the right word) to receive a free half burger-bap and some crazy potato flat bread thingies from the BBQ due to the lack of vegetarian or chicken options – GET IN! Eventually, however, the tiredness greeted me once more (and with a vengeance) and so we promptly walked back up the Nybyen (the barracks where we are staying – about half hour walk from Longyearbyen), but not before being attacked by Arctic Terns!
Despite extreme fatigue, the midnight sun made sleep rather difficult and therefore getting out of bed even harder....but a hike had been planned, so out of bed I got! The IPY summer school (which I attended the two years previously) is going on concurrently with the sea-ice school I am attending , and so a few of the sea-ice people joined the IPY crew to go on a hike to Nordensjöldtoppen. It seems that despite losing some weight and doing a fair amount of walking in Australia, I am still pretty unfit, at least by Norwegian standards anyway. The hike took probably 6 hours in total, but what killed me was the 1080m climb from sea-level to the peak! The bloody, sweat and tears were totally worth it though – the view from the peak was amazing and just difficult to describe in words, so I will let my photos do the talking in that respect. Luckily the walk down was much easier, mostly because I just leaped down the snow-covered slopes and hoped for the best...luckily it worked out fine and I didn’t injure myself. All in all, it was an amazing hike (I will probably take that statement back tomorrow – I’m already finding it difficult to move), and definitely an amazing start to my time in Svalbard. Great people, great views, great weather – let’s hope it continues!
Despite extreme fatigue, the midnight sun made sleep rather difficult and therefore getting out of bed even harder....but a hike had been planned, so out of bed I got! The IPY summer school (which I attended the two years previously) is going on concurrently with the sea-ice school I am attending , and so a few of the sea-ice people joined the IPY crew to go on a hike to Nordensjöldtoppen. It seems that despite losing some weight and doing a fair amount of walking in Australia, I am still pretty unfit, at least by Norwegian standards anyway. The hike took probably 6 hours in total, but what killed me was the 1080m climb from sea-level to the peak! The bloody, sweat and tears were totally worth it though – the view from the peak was amazing and just difficult to describe in words, so I will let my photos do the talking in that respect. Luckily the walk down was much easier, mostly because I just leaped down the snow-covered slopes and hoped for the best...luckily it worked out fine and I didn’t injure myself. All in all, it was an amazing hike (I will probably take that statement back tomorrow – I’m already finding it difficult to move), and definitely an amazing start to my time in Svalbard. Great people, great views, great weather – let’s hope it continues!
No comments:
Post a Comment